Įpisode #2: Icarus flies too high: Daedalus is desperate to escape from Crete. The second episode takes place against the background that Daedalus, who had earlier won fame by inventing the Labyrinth in Crete, has been imprisoned on that island with Icarus, as a result of committing some indiscretions that had angered the king, Minos. Talos, in his feathery new guise, takes his mother’s name, Perdix, and from then on, like a real-life partridge, always avoids heights. However, the goddess Minerva intervenes, catches him, and turns him into a partridge, “masking him with feathers in mid-air”. Seized with jealousy, Daedalus pushes Talos off the Acropolis rock, seemingly to his death. But Talos turns out to be even more inventive than his master. Both, as it happens, implicate Icarus’ father Daedalus in the ill-fated fall of a child for whom he was responsible.Įpisode #1: Talos gets too clever: In the first episode, Daedalus’ sister, Perdix, sends her 12 year old son Talos to be an apprentice to Daedalus, a master craftsman. For our purposes, two episodes are crucial. The most comprehensive statement of the Icarus myth is by the Roman poet Ovid in his Metamorphosis. The most well-known of these was Auden, whose poem Musée des Beaux Arts, inspired by the painting in that museum, not only elevated the reputation of that version relative to the van Buuren version, but also, as we shall see, may have even had some influence on the actual interpretation of the painting. Even more interest was aroused because of the strong attraction of the subject matter for 20th century poets – appropriately enough for a painting itself based on a classical poem. Spirited views were expressed about which was superior and which, if either, was an original. Nevertheless, the natural (and carefully-cultivated) competition between the two versions, together with the dramatic theme of death, and the number of enigmatic features (such as the unusual treatment of Icarus), were key factors contributing to their popular allure. As it happens, recent technical studies appear to have confirmed that both the Beaux-Arts version and the van Buuren version are copies of a lost work by Bruegel, though we still are not certain which copy is the more accurate.
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